Kerry’s Swift Boat tour was his second tour of duty during Vietnam. He volunteered for service and requested combat duty. He wasn’t granted his wish until he re-upped. He was sent home after getting wounded three times, which was standard procedure.
Conservatives should really try to have more respect for war heroes.
magellan01, we have a perfectly good (and probably underused) Pit where you could have posted a substantial portion of your last post.
This trainwreck is sufficiently painful to read without having to Moderate the sidebar discussions.
He had nothing to apologize for and everybody knows it.
Yeah, right. It makes MORE sense that the joke would have been written as it was spoken. :rolleyes:
Uh, whaaa?
He never once uses the word “troops”, which is your proof that he simply must have been talking about the troops. Got it. Which logical interpretation caused a sudden and complete reversal of your previous opinion on Kerry. Uh huh.
Ooops! Original quote from Ambushed. My bad.
But I insist on belaboring a point: none of us heard this without bias, the bias was built into the reporting. All of us (save those of us actually there in Pasadena…) heard a “reaction” story, as in “Republicans are claiming Kerry bashed the troops”. Followed by the (rather truncated) sound bitch.
I very much doubt that had any of us heard the speech as it was given, without that “priming”, would have leapt to the conclusion that he was dissing the troops. I certainly didn’t, but wouldn’t have anyway, since I didn’t catch that subtle twitch of his lip that signaled “I am now talking about the troops!”.
Yes. My apologies for my part in the hijack.
False dichotomy. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Agreed, everyone knows it was a flubbed joke. Who in their right mind thinks Kerry or any politician for that matter would make a speech and insult the troops.
The only place this is even being taken slightly serious are on the right wing blogs, because that’s all they’ve got. Personally I find it sort of funny and it ranks right up there with Freedom Fries in a politician making themself look like an idiot even discussing it. McCain wins the pointy hat award for jumping into this one.
This really matters? Do you really think someone in NJ won’t vote for Menendez because Kerry screwed up a joke?
[semijack]McCain is turning into a real piece of groveling-to-the-extreme-right work.[ok it was a real hijack]
Well, it most certainly should not matter, but when did that change anything? I find it absolutely plausible that votes, perhaps even many tens of thousands of them, could be lost over a gaffe like Kerry’s. He inadvertantly stepped in a pat dropped by one of our sacred cows, you see. The electorate should know better, but because we manifestly do not, I must say Kerry is a first class bonehead for even going near this little funny he was trying to make. The apology, however absurd, and his abstinence from campaigning on others’ behalf, are entirely sensible moves, given the climate. In a way, I’m almost a little happy, simply because this might have sealed Kerry’s fate as a future presidential candidate. If the guy couldn’t beat Bush, goodness help us if the Republicans field a candidate who can speak in complete sentences and Kerry is the Democrat’s nominee once again. Comments like this demonstrate pretty aptly why Kerry was a loser before, and why he’ll be one again if given the chance. Stick to the Senate and put a sock in it, John.
To boil down: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Which isn’t here.
Extraordinary claim: Kerry deliberately dissed the troops, an act of near perfect political suicide. No one not under a severe regime of medication could doubt that, given the hysteria of reaction currently on display. The question that no one here has answered is: why? As an effort to motivate the ruthlessly unpatriotic Dem base? Please. Spare me. Even if that were true, and we all required new umbrellas to protect us from the flop of flying pigs…why bother? Even if such a rabid base existed, are they not already on board? What is to be gained?
Outside of a deliberate effort to sabotage his own party, what possible motivation is credible?
And if the “troop dis” were inadvertent…then this is all about nothing much, isn’t it? In that instance, it’s only about Kerry, who isn’t running for anything. Mind you, this assumes something not really in evidence, that the “troop dis” actually happened at all. All we have in support of that is inference and suggestion, solidly founded on innuendo derived from a prejudiced approach: we were all told what we were about to see, and then saw it.
This is nothing more than a desperate attempt to create an issue where none exists, a Hail Mary fumble, hoping against hope for a turnover in the end zone.
Revulsion and disgust with McCain: seconded. Straight talk, my ass.
As Jon Steward said last night on The Daily Show, Kerry could lose an election he isn’t even in.
Jon Stewart, damn it.
First of all, I never accepted the “extraordinary claims require extradinary proof” meme. Proof is proof, and “extraordinary” is in the eye of the beholder. Secondly, the claim being made by many isn’t even remotely extraordinary-- that Kerry wasn’t referring to Bush and wasn’t dis’ing the troops (on purpose), but that he made a gaffe by implying that if you flunk out of college, you might end up in the military. Now, as I’ve said over and over, I don’t believe the evidence supports that claim, but I don’t see how it could be called an “extraordinary claim”. If someone wants to claim that Kerry purposely dis’ed the troops, then that would be an axtraordinary claim, IMO.
I don’t think anyone is of the opinion they he intentionally insulted the troops. As I explained earlier, he used the troops to make a point and that’s what got him into trouble. All he had to do was apologize and say he mangled the sentence or thought. Much like Bush has done repeatedly. But he didn’t do that. He was defiant, trying to act tough. And then that backfired. Now he’ll be slapped with he was against apologiziing before he was for it. As dumb as that is, he deserves it. And yes, this is about Kerry. Mainly. How people react to this also tends to reflect on them. Good for McCain and Clinton and Ford in that regard. No doubt YMMV.
The fact that your scenario is not credible doesn’t mean it won’t be believed for a significant number of voters. As I pointed out in post #290, many on the right-wing have conditioned themselves to believe the absolute worst about liberals and Democrats. To them, people like Kerry–deep down in their pitch black souls–are so inherently hostile to America and the troops that they don’t need motivation to dis them. That’s just what they do.
I wish I could believe Kerry’s gaffe will ultimately amount to nothing but if the Democrats underperform next Tuesday, every pundit in America is going to point to it as the reason why. Like it or not, this story has traction–that’s why (much to my disappointment) other Democrats like Hillary Clinton are so cowed that they are doing all they can to distance themselves from Kerry rather than try to calmly explain it was an attempted anti-Bush crack that came out wrong. It’s apparent in today’s political climate that, regardless of whether you’re comically-impaired like Kerry or not, it’s best to stay away from any jokes or witticisms. Also, for God’s sake, do not indulge in any irony at any time. That’s the sure way to political oblivion.
Which he managed to do without once using a word like “troops”. Just as I said, an inference solidly based on an innuendo, buttressed by presumption.
And if he didn’t deliberatly insult anyone, then what is all the hysteria about, unless it as I diagnosed: desperation.